No balls dropped

Posted on June 6, 2007
Filed Under Advertising, Election, Politics, Rant, chancers, not funny, society | 1 Comment

I’ve just been for a mid-week pint(s) so what follows may or may not be strictly true.

In late 2005, Dublin City Council met to decide how to spend their budget for 2006. Item no. 56 concerned alarming reports that children were playing football in the park in my estate. Obviously, this was a bad thing so they allocated â‚¬100 (plus â‚¬1,500 labour) to errect a sign prohibiting ball games in the park. And so it came to pass. The 10-year olds immediately understood this new prohibition and stopped playing ball games.

Unfortunately, after a week, they got bored and reversed the sign so it wasn’t readible from the road. After another week, they got bored again and removed the sign. So the poor, sad, lonely pole has stood naked, but proud, for the past year. No ball games remember!!

Thankfully, Dublin City Council met again in late 2006. They reviewed how the allocated money for 2006 was spent. When item no. 56 came up, there were mutters, there were frowns, there were even some creased brows. We’ll never know thanks to the (ahem) FOI laws but maybe it was Cyprian Brady, T.D. (he of 939 1st preference votes or 2.7%*) who muttered, ‘Those cheeky 10-yr olds are now 11 and they’ll probably have their first pets. Let’s spend this year’s â‚¬100 (plus â‚¬1,500 labour) on different signs.’ Maybe it was Tony Gregory, TD, who agreed with him and countered, ‘as a school teacher on sabbatical since 1979**, I think we should issue the signs in Irish. You know, for cultural reasons, loike.’ They all thought it was a wonderful idea and voted it through as item no. 55.

And so it came to pass. Dublin City Council worker’s descended on my estate. In the same way that a dog pisses on a lamp post, the council workers put up posters on every lamp post in my estate (ed: I thought the election was over?) basically saying, ‘the dog has done it’s duty, now do yours.’ But in the Irish language!

Thing is, it’s probably a good thing. There’s no money left to actually cut the grass in the park and it’s literally knee-high. There were a couple of kids lying in the park as I walked home and you could barely see them. So, it’s probably a good thing that there’s no dogshit in the park otherwise the kids could get some nasty diseases.

Oh, and I now know the Irish word for dog pooh!

*Cyrian Brady got 939 first preference votes (2.7%) and he got elected on the eight count. Frankly, that’s shameful. Our dear leader, Bertie, got 12,734 first preference votes (36.8%) and was elected on the first count.

** Tony Gregory is a teacher and a civil servant. He was elected to the Dail (Parliament) 28 years ago (?) so his ‘old’ job is kept open for him. A temp has covered his job for the past 28 years. He could give up the â‚¬100k politician’s gig and return to his â‚¬50k teacher’s job. On the upside, a school teacher gets 3 months summer holidays so that’s some compensation for the drop in wages!! Oh, no, wait….

I live in the Dublin Central constituency, btw.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.